1)
She had dark hair and dark eyes and she always knew what to do.
She was strong and brave and she would fight to the ends of the Earth to save it.
(Well, almost.)
And she was smart. So, so smart. Almost as smart as her partner. He would have given anything in the world to look at a room and see what she saw. To think on his feet like her. To have a whole room of people admire him.
He admired her. He could tease and joke, and she would roll her eyes. She would tell him he's an idiot, but she said it with that smile, and he didn't even care. And when they kissed, he wished her phone would never ring.
(It always did.)
He was her distraction. Even when she was in a foul mood, he could always get her to laugh. She would talk about the case, about Skulduggery, about her family. She would unload and make it sound like saving the world was like a busy day at the office.
Nothing ever fazed her. No one ever fazed her. When they would walk into places together, people would turn and whisper.
And maybe all that attention went to her head.
And he couldn't even stay mad, even when his heart felt like it wasn't beating. And he knew, knew, knew she blamed him.
Because it was never her messing things up.
2)
He doesn't remember the color of her hair. He couldn't see it in the dark club, so he decided she was blond. Blond with blue eyes and a big wide grin.
(He supposed it didn't matter.)
He stared at the ceiling, his bed smelling like perfume.
He remembered the way she bit at his neck, and he fingered the bruises.
She told him not to call her Valerie.
He wondered what her name was.
He decided on Lilly.
He stared at the ceiling and felt empty inside.
3)
The first time he saw her, she is lying on the floor and probably dead. He grabs her arm and suddenly they were in the cool, clean air.
She wasn't dead, and she looked at him like he was god. It wasn't a bad feeling. Her hands shook and she held onto his arm, and asked if she had died. He laughed, and she looked a little annoyed.
He liked her accent. He liked everything about her. The way she would hum as she baked, the fact that she baked, her accent, the way she was so happy and nice, that she would tell him when she was nervous. She was so normal.
They drank together, giggling and trying to play board games. He used to lose at Scrabble, but would beat her almost every time at Monopoly. Her apartment had a drawer, a counter, a coat hook for him. He was very much in her life.
It was a nice change. It was nice. She was nice. He could see himself with her for a long, long time.
She told him she loved him. (And doesn't take it back.)
She tried to kill him.
1.5)
He told himself she was different. The same hair, eyes, grin. But he imagined there was something softer about her, around the edges. She shut her phone off when she was with him, looked him in the eyes and nodded when he talked.
But she was still…
Sometimes, he could see it. In the way she snapped when she was irritable, the way she was devoted—to her family, this time. To the ends of the Earth for them.
He convinced himself she was different. She made herself different. And he thought it was the trying that made her not.
She painted her nails. She gossiped about her friends. She asked him about his life.
And then she stepped up to save the world, and he was almost glad when people gave her dirty looks, scorned her. Because then, then, she wouldn't find someone else to run off with.
He thought he was a bad person as she kissed him.
He supposed it didn't matter when he found her dead on the stairs.